Fallout After a Blogger's Private Comments Are Aired

Journalists, like all people, have opinions. Should those privately held opinions preclude them from writing?

That age-old debate was reignited, with a twist, last week when the blogger David Weigel resigned from The Washington Post after he made disparaging comments about conservatives on a private e-mail list called Journolist. The twist was that Mr. Weigel was hired three months ago, in part, to have opinions. As a blogger covering the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, he was given more latitude than traditional newspaper reporters to write with a point of view and reach conclusions.

The case bewildered many people in the clubby world of Washington journalism, and reaffirmed the belief that mainline news organizations are still struggling to adapt to the Web, where opinions are less likely to be scrubbed from a person's writing.